Publisher: Snowbird Game Studios
Developer: Snowbird Game Studios
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2 GHz Pentium/AMD 2000+ or better CPU, 512 MB RAM, GeForce 7300/Radeon 9200 or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Back in 2010, Eador: Genesis was quietly released to Russian-language audiences. Developed almost exclusively by one man, Alexander Bokulev, it was a mashup of various strategy games into one pot of dreams. It took the best of games such as Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic and became something that would punch you in the face but leave you begging for more. It didn’t get much attention for many years because of its odd interface and the lack of an English translation. But now, Bokulev is back with a team and a budget. Eador: Masters of the Broken World isn’t just a prettier face, it’s an all-around better game.

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Petroglyph’s latest game has escaped from beta testing and has been released into the world. Battle for Graxia takes the MOBA formula and evolves a lot of features. Match replays don’t just sit on a server; they’re downloadable. You can queue up as a White Knight and fill in for players who drop, and cut your teeth in PvE before taking it online in the PvP. Free heroes rotate out every week, and players can customize their heroes using artifacts and skill trees. Interested players can go ahead and sign up here. Plus, it has a hero named Murderhoof, which is awesome.

Publisher: Phoenix Online Studios
Developer: Phoenix Online Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/iOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 2.0 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, 2.5 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

I think we can stop using the “adventure games are dead, but…” line. Along with platformers, adventure games are low-cost laboratories where creative indies can play around within well-established genre conventions. If the subtitle didn’t tip you off, Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is an adventure game in the vein of the airport thrillers of Clive Cussler and James Patterson. Think Castle without the snark, or the Alex Cross movies without the suck. It’s a world where murder happens like an elemental force, and killers leave puzzles and traps behind like rats leave droppings. With remarkably high production values and Adventure Goddess Jane Jensen attached as a story consultant, Cognition seems to have everything going for it.

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Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
System requirements: Windows XP SP 3/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 1.8 GHz Core2Duo E6300/2.1 GHz Athlon 64 X2 4050+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce 8600/Radeon HD 2600 XT or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c,10 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action-Adventure
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Let’s face it: Lara Croft isn’t an interesting character. Impossibly athletic, remarkably good-looking. There’s no problem she couldn’t overcome by climbing on walls and shooting endangered animals. She didn’t have a personality, she had breasts. She was part sex symbol, part wish fulfillment, and entirely plastic. Now that the franchise has creatively bankrupted itself for a second time, developer Crystal Dynamics has decided to go back and rework Lara from the ground up. Just as film director Christopher Nolan saved Batman from decades of one-dimensional edginess, Crystal Dynamics has breathed new life and humanity into a previously synthetic (and sexist) character. But to make this new Lara, first they had to put her through hell.

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Publisher: OGPlanet
Developer: FIX Korea
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista/Win 7), Radeon X800/GeForce 7600 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 6 GB hard-drive space
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: April 2013

Back in the ancient days of 1999, when Pentiums still roamed the Earth, a guy named Minh Le, along with some other talented guys, created a small mod for Half-Life called Counter Strike. The little mod caught on, and it and Minh were soon snapped up by Valve. Soon, he was hard at work on Counter Strike 2. The project eventually faded, and Minh left to develop his next game on his own. After slow-boiling for more than a decade, that game is ready to be served. Recently, an open beta launched, sundering the seals and letting the masses in (and testing server loads). With the official launch right around the corner, Tactical Intervention should be about finished. So, how does it look?

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We’ve spent years speculating about what the next generation of game consoles might look like. To help us out, Sony decided to take a few hours out of their busy day on February 20 to share some info about their next-generation machine. (The image at left is one of many concepts created by various sources, and might not be an accurate view of the console; we still don’t know what the damn thing will look like when it releases in the 2013 holiday season).

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Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Ninja Theory
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.8 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800GTS/Radeon HD3850 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 9 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Censorship might seem so Nuremberg 1937, but don’t forget that we Americans have many systems in place to insure that every medium has its own classification ghettos. Sometimes, this results in the R-rated action movie, which is labeled as including “mature content” despite having no maturity whatsoever. Like cartoon cigarette mascots, it’s always been known that Schwarzenegger movies are made with the 14-year-old male demographic in mind. DMC Devil May Cry, like those action movies, revels in its violence and gore in a way that only an adolescent can. With a new reboot by a decidedly western developer, the series takes a more colorful approach with the juvenile demon-vs-the-system series. Even though it’s the kind of game that literally scrawls obscenities directed towards the player on the walls, it doesn’t play dirty. In fact, it just might be the best action game to come out in years.

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Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Developer: Project Aces
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/2.4 GHz AMD Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8800GT/ATI Radeon HD 3850 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 16 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Flight sim
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Ace Combat holds a special place in my heart, mostly for its childlike disregard for reality. It’s a high-budget projection of what goes through a 14-year-old boy’s mind when he obsesses over back issues of Jane’s. Decades of fighter jet technology swooshing over a city, unleashing dozens of missiles at each other as they dive and roll in close knife fights. Reality is so much more boring, as planes sparingly launch their handful of ordinance from miles outside of visual range. Ace Combat takes the shape and names of the real world and paints them atop a much more interesting reality. The latest in the series, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon has now landed on PC in the form of an Enhanced Edition. With a new cinematic presentation and aircraft that aren’t jet planes, Assault Horizon tries to do something new with an old formula, but keep that romantic fantasy alive.

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Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.2 GHz or better CPU, 512 MB RAM, 32 MB DirectX 8-compatible graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 250 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Apparently thinking that the edutainment sector was looking a bit thin, Dennaton Games has made an electronic simulacrum of what it might feel like to go on a coked-up shooting rampage. With a strong retro 80s style, Hotline Miami is fast, fun, and will make you feel terrible about yourself by the end.

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Publisher: Renegade Kid
Developer: Renegade Kid
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.8 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, 23 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Platformer
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: Available now

Retro-nostalgia is a many-layered cake. One one level, it can simply be a way to advertize that “I remember my childhood.” That’s why Walmart sells shirts with the NES controller over the word “addict,” despite the fact that whoever actually buys those shirts likely spends far more time yelling at 10-year-olds on Xbox Live than actually interacting with their NES. But rose-colored glasses aside, there’s a general feeling that gaming has lost something. Don’t be so ignorant to ignore that we’ve also gained so very much, but it’s OK to acknowledge that perhaps there’s something nestled within the pixels of a 2D platformer that you won’t find inside the quad-core renderings of a blockbuster game. It’s from here that Mutant Mudds comes. It has it’s own reason to exist, but it’s heart is in love with the past, for better or worse.

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Blockbuster games are getting pretty amazing. Publishers can sink hundreds of millions of dollars into projects, confident that they’ll get their investment back a dozen times over. I mean, just look at some of the throwaway set pieces in Black Ops 2? Here’s a world, painstakingly sculpted out of pixels and wireframe, but you never touch it. It’s all backdrop to the man-shooting, because if you stop to look around and, god forbid, interact with the environment in a meaningful way, you might get bored or something. It’s clear that developers have amazing tools at their disposal. Isn’t it about time they use them?

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Publisher: Krystian Majewski
Developer: Krystian Majewski
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Mac OSX Leopard, DirectX 5, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 200 MB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Math classes occupy similar places in my life where dentist appointments are usually found. It’s not that I can’t do math (my weekends of Dungeons and Dragons prove that much), but when it comes to the classroom, all the joy leaves me. One day I stumbled upon Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, quite by accident. I barely even knew what it was about, only that it sounded interesting and had Escher pictures in it. Soon, enthralled by stories about pretty high-end mathematical theories, the nature of numbers, and formalized logic, I was enraged. Why hadn’t my teachers showed me how beautiful math truly was? I felt like I had been eating grape skins and wasn’t told about the fine wine next to it.

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Publisher: Nordic Games
Developer: The Farm 51
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz Core2Duo/Athlon 64 X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB GeForce 8600/Radeon HD 2600XT or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 5 GB hard-drive space
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Painkiller was a game that resonated with audiences primarily because of its retro throwbacks. Dressed up in heavy metal, its gory brand of shooting had a pure, unadulterated quality that provided a bloody refuge in a world increasingly filled with chest-high walls. Not only was it a smash hit back in 2004, but it also spawned five expansion packs. Developer The Farm 51, who previously made Necrovision, their own demonic shooter (in the Painkiller engine, no less), is now remaking the original game, with shiny new graphics and a co-op mode. However, it seems that Painkiller: Hell and Damnation’s greatest enemy just might be itself.

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Retirees gathered around the Wii. Mothers playing a few rounds of Angry Birds on their smartphones. In the last two decades, games have emerged from a small curiosity to a billion-dollar industry that attracts nearly everyone, even (perhaps especially) those who don’t consider themselves gamers. As this new media has slowly emerged from its childhood, we see more of its full-grown potential. Games don’t simply amaze us with technological wonders. They stimulate our intellect, creativity and emotions. Our hobby has just as much artistic potential as any film or novel, perhaps more. Being interactive, games have many artistic opportunities that simply can’t exist in traditional media. For all of their unique strengths, games are still thought of like any older art form. We talk about stunning visuals, immersive sound design and amazing storylines, but we ignore the meaning the game mechanics themselves carry.

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Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Reflections
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 3.0 GHz Pentium D/2.2 GHz Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or better CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista/Win7), 256 MB graphics card with Shader Model 4.0 support, DirectX 9-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 10 GB hard drive space
Genre: Driving
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Driving games seem to fall into two camps: simulation and arcade. This division shows just how stagnant the genre has become. Just because a game’s based around cars, doesn’t mean that they have to all be so similar. Of all things, Driver: San Francisco comes along to stir the pot. After its first smash hit a decade ago, the franchise was dragged down by a series of poorly received sequels. Can developer Reflections revive both the property and the entire genre?

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